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The trading pit
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OPEN OUTCRY is a fascinating look at the high-speed, high-power trading floor of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.
Director Jon Else explores a hectic, noisy, seemingly chaotic workplace with his signature style, eschewing narration in favor of long, real-time shots that bring the viewer right into the heart-stopping action of the trading floor. (Enter the pit to experience the action.) In the process, the show paints a compelling picture of sudden wealth, sudden disaster, and grace under pressure as traders exchange billions of dollars in futures and options contracts - for cattle, pork bellies, Eurodollars and the Nasdaq-100 futures. It is also a portrait of an endangered environment, as the digital revolution has eliminated the open outcry system of trading at many of the world's financial exchanges.
Clerks learning hand signals |
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The film portrays understandably nervous young clerks learning the open outcry trading system, with its seemingly senseless language and hand signals, hoping to one day make a fortune. In the live cattle-trading pit, a seasoned broker explains how futures trading works: "If you go to McDonald's, your cheeseburger, I probably traded it, maybe 20 times. McDonald's starts hedging their cattle prices six months or more before they actually are going to use it because they've got a good idea of what their demand and supply is going to be, or what supply they're going to need. So by the time it becomes a hamburger, every Big Mac everywhere in the United States, every guy in that cattle pit may have traded that any number of times. Your Big Mac may only cost a dollar; I can't say that it would cost two dollars without us, but I know it would be more than a dollar. There's no question if we weren't around your Big Mac would cost a dollar today, three dollars tomorrow, 50 cents next week and I don't think that's in the best interest of most of the people in our society."
As traders ruminate on social values, market volatility and greed, one asks, "If a teacher makes $30,000 a year and I make what I make, something's not right in the grander scheme of things, and I question that." But another reminds us that commodities trading is not a pursuit for cold-hearted capitalists but, as we see in the film, for people with a gambler's heart and a gambler's nerves of steel: "Remember, when people hear about all the money commodity traders make, for every one guy that's made a fortune I guarantee you that there are five guys that are driving cabs." Else's film captures this heart-stopping volatility, this roller coaster rocketing through billions a day that makes the Merc one of the most fascinating spots on the global financial map.
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